Sell Your Cleverness
by green lion
Summary: "Ah, and truthfully I did not know what I had done or why I had done it. For if the Name of God could bind an angel, what could it do to one such as Melisande?" A missing Phedre/Melisande scene from the end of Kushiel's Avatar.


**Disclaimer: **Kushiel's Legacy is the property of Jacqueline Carey. My borrowing is meant to be a celebration of the world she has created and nothing more.

**Author**'**s Note: **I'm a huge fan of this series and this pairing, but this is my first ever published attempt at a story in this fandom. If you enjoy it, please review. Also, I have modified this version of the story slightly to fit this site's content guidelines. The unedited version can be found over at AO3, where I write as kmo.

* * *

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,

Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

_-Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi_

The narrative of my life is long complete, my ink-stained pages transformed into neat volumes by the printer's and the bookbinder's art. I have endeavored to give a fair accounting of these events as they happened to me, events that are all too quickly passing from memory into legend, skipping history altogether. The whole of my story is there, the good and the bad of it. I would like to think I have neither embellished my victories nor omitted my defeats.

But Elua knows I have omitted somewhat. And if I have let fall the curtain over certain scenes, the players still at their play, does that render my tale less than truthful? To leave out this one in particular implies I feel a shame I do not feel. Let us say there are some memories too fraught, too complicated and too private to share with all and sundry.

I do not know who will read these pages. Perhaps Imriel will find them one day long after I am gone. Or mayhap some enterprising scholar generations from today shall blow away the dust and cobwebs and unearth them in the labyrinthine innards of the Royal Archives. To you, future reader, I say, treasure them, burn them, publish them even. But know what I write here I write for myself, to satisfy my own soul and naught more.

* * *

That glorious afternoon in La Serenissima I recall as if it were yesterday, it so indelibly etched in my mind's eye. I took my leave of Melisande, her kiss still burning on my lips, and rejoined Joscelin and Imriel. The sun set that day in vibrant color, streaking the clouds indigo and bronze, near to blinding my eyes with beauty. The smell of the sea assaulted my nostrils and beneath it, Melisande's sweet and spicy perfume lay upon my clothes and caught in my hair. Her kiss had ignited in the Name of God within me, heightening my every sense, heating my blood to molten gold.

I went about the rest of the evening in my most vacant and god-touched haze. I pushed morsels of fish about my plate and sipped at my wine, but I could not taste a thing as long as I was under the influence of the Sacred Name. I had grown adept at holding those mighty syllables within me in the past weeks, or so I had thought. But underneath their blazing heat, I felt something far more disturbing: the relentless pricking of Kushiel's dart, which grew more piercing with each passing hour. It needled me with an intensity I had not felt since the first hot blush of my youth, and such as I had never expected to feel again after Daršanga. Mine own ill thoughts and ill deeds in that place had caused me despise my own _anguisette_ nature. I felt a traitor to myself, my body a traitor to my heart. If I could no longer find pleasure in pain, who was I? My entire self became one unanswered question.

They say all knowledge is worth having. I would know myself again.

To that end, I slipped away in the hours after Imriel had fallen asleep. The hurt in Joscelin's eyes as I left pained me, filled me with guilt, and yet the darkest corner of my cursed nature took pleasure in that, too. Ever the perfect companion, he fetched me my cloak and called for the carriage. "If you do not return by morning, I swear to Elua, I will paint the walls of Asherat-by-the-Sea red with Melisande Shahrizai's blood," he warned me. It was not a jest.

* * *

The harmonies of the priestesses as they chanted the evensong washed over me as I entered the darkened sanctuary. A young novice greeted me and led me to the woman she called the Bella Donna. I followed her down an endless warren of hallways until we reached a door with an iron knocker shaped in the form of a scallop shell. The girl trembled as she tapped gently on the door and I knew then that she yielded, causing me to blush myself- whether out of desire or envy, I know not. "Ma Donna, la Contessa di Montrève," she announced.

A honeyed voice whose texture I would never forget as long as I lived bade us enter in Caerdicci. With a quivering hand, I pushed open the door to Melisande's bedchamber, entered, and out of sheer reflex, knelt _abeyante_ on her stone floor, eyes downcast.

"Phèdre," she said simply in greeting. Ah Elua, I wonder if she ever knew the effect my name on her lips had upon me. Probably. "The hour is late and we have concluded our bargain. Sealed it with a kiss, in fact. Is there aught else you require of me?" I could not see her face but I could hear the smile in her voice all the while.

I raised my head and looked her in the eye. The hour was indeed late and she was clad in nothing but a black silk dressing gown, her dark hair resting in a thick braid over her left shoulder. Her irises shone their perfect sapphire blue, but the rims were lined with red. Was Melisande merely tired or had she actually been weeping? "My lady, must there always be such games between us? You know very well why I am here."

"Oh, Kushiel's chosen, there will always be games between you and I. That was how the gods made us," she laughed.

"You would have me say it?"

Melisande rested her hand at the very finial of my marque, the inches she herself had paid for, and her touch seared through the thin fabric of my dress like a brand. "Yes, I do believe I would," she told me, her voice so impossibly calm it was maddening.

I gazed up at her and gave her my reasons; "After I left Drujan and the horrors of the Mahrkagir's harem, I thought I should never again desire Kushiel's violent pleasures. The things he did to me, that we did together..."

Melisande's honeyed voice took on a pained edge. "Acts so horrible you seek to protect me from the knowledge of them."

"Yes, my lady." I tore my eyes away and fixed them on that bare millimeter where the hem of her skirt brushed against the cold stone floor. "I took pleasure in them. Never before have I hated my own nature so much. And yet today, with you..." I choked on my words, hot with desire and shame.

The next thing I felt was the softness of her hand against my left cheek, thumbnail gently grazing the corner of my eye. I trembled. "Kushiel's dart strikes as true as ever," Melisande pronounced. "But tell me, Phèdre, is there not another better suited to this task? A skilled adept of Mandrake House? Or, one of your patrons- Nicola L'Envers, perhaps?"

I do not know if she said the latter out of jealousy or merely to signal the extent of her knowledge about my personal affairs. "You have always claimed to know me better than anyone else. I would have it be you," I told her without pretense.

Melisande Shahrizai stared back at me and seemed to weigh and measure me in one unfathomable glance. Whatever language her expression was written in, it was one I never learned to master. She turned her back to me, black silk billowing out behind her in one swift graceful movement. "You presume a great deal of me, Phèdre nó Delaunay. It has been a long and trying day. One in which I regained and lost my son in less than the space of an hour." The undisguised weariness and sorrow in her voice confirmed my earlier suspicions. Ah Elua, even after all she had done, it pained me to see her suffer this way. "Perhaps I have not the heart for what you propose."

Her rejection stung me like an unexpected slap. I had not even considered the possibility that she would…or could…refuse me. "I understand, my lady. Forgive my intrusion. I shall return to my lodgings and tomorrow be on my way." As I rose to leave, I could not help letting frustration and petulance creep into my voice, "Though Elua only knows when we two shall ever have the opportunity again..."

She walked over to where I knelt and laid one hand possessively on my shoulder. "Phèdre, hush," she said with wry amusement. My body instinctively responded to her command and sank back _abeyante_ at her side. I was disturbingly put in mind of a mistress bringing a favorite hound to heel. Long clever fingers ran through my curls, alternately smoothing and snagging them in a way I found most pleasurable. "The lacquered box on the top shelf of the bookcase- fetch it here."

I did as my lady commanded and found the polished wooden box next to a worn copy of the _Trois Milles Joies_. Melisande reached inside her dressing gown and drew forth a necklace, three keys of gold filigree strung on a simple chain. She fitted one of these to the box's lock and opened it. Resting on a lining of black satin lay one shining flechette and a large diamond on a velvet cord. I reached my hand inside and ran my forefinger across the edge of the flechette, piercing my skin and causing moisture to pool between my thighs. My fingers traced the familiar bevels of the diamond, and those pierced, too, reopening old wounds of the heart.

I removed the flechette and placed it in Melisande's waiting hand. "This tool, my lady, I will yield to. But your token I can never wear again, not even for a single night."

"As you wish," she said, the barest touch of disappointment in her voice. "Prepare yourself."

I shrugged off my loosely tied gown and then my silken underskirts, while Melisande heaped more coals on the brazier along with a scent I recognized as her own: bergamot and cedar with a hint of something sweet that I could never quite discern. In the far corner of the room, four iron rungs set into the walls and floor waited for me.

She produced a length of heavy silk rope and proceeded to bind me hand and foot. As she worked, she spoke to me; "Kushiel's path is one of trust. It is about much more than the giving and receiving of pain, as surely you know. It is about the exchange of power between two persons." My lady worked swiftly and though she had not Nicola L'Envers' special knowledge of knots and ropes, she tied my bonds most effectively, tight enough to cause the raw silk to chafe against my wrists and ankles should I try to struggle. When she had finished, Melisande looked back at me to admire her handiwork, eyes raking over my bound naked body with untold mischief. But when she spoke her tone was very serious; "I have trusted you, Phèdre, with that which is most dear to me." _Imriel_. "Can you trust me even a fraction as much? I wonder."

"After all that has happened between us? Truly, my lady, I think it unlikely."

Melisande drew close, close enough so that my already erect nipples brushed the heavy silk of her gown. I gasped. She ran a hand through my dark hair, wrenching my head back. And then she kissed me, claiming me, so much more forcefully than she had earlier that afternoon. I yielded all beneath her conquering tongue, while my body cried out helplessly for more. My bones turned to water, and I would have melted to the floor were it not for the bindings keeping me aloft. She broke the kiss abruptly and said in a promise of cruel amusement, "We shall see, Phèdre. We shall see."

For the last, Melisande drew aside the silken fabric binding her own gown together and used it to blindfold me. For the briefest of moments before it all went dark, I was rewarded with a glimpse of creamy skin and the curve of her breast as her gown fell open. "Do you still use the same _signale_?"

I gave out a strangled laugh. It had been so long since my dear friend Hyacinthe had been my safe haven. He still languished on his island while I tarried here and I felt no small pang of guilt at that. "Yes," I answered numbly.

"Good. I am willing to wager you long to give your _signale_ as much as I long to hear it." I shivered because I feared this very well might be true. "Shall we begin?" she said with all the insouciance of a schoolmistress about to commence a lesson. And oh what a lesson it was. Though I am certain Asherat's Sanctuary hardly provided the roster of skilled lovers she would have enjoyed in Terre d'Ange, it could not be said that Melisande's skills had grown rusty with the passage of time. She began at my extremities, starting with the sensitive skin at the hollows of my wrists and ankles, then traveled upward and inward toward the backs of my knees the inside of my elbows. Pain and pleasure spiraled toward my centre and my own tears mingled with my cut flesh, their salt furthering my torment. Kushiel's bronze wings pounded in my skull, while all the while the Name of God simmered to the point of boiling in my veins.

At last Melisande and I had come to our familiar impasse. My body was at once a heated inferno and a coiled spring longing to snap. She asked, far too gently, "Do you wish me to stop? Say the word and I shall."

I was in exquisite agony and yet when I looked within myself, the part that longed to give the _signale_ felt strangely absent. "I have endured that and more, my lady," I replied hoarsely.

She turned the flechette over so that its blade shaved just the topmost layer of my skin. It was not painful, but it was menacing. "I did not ask what you could endure. I asked you what you wished, Phèdre," she pressed.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Kushiel's path is indeed about trust and it seemed I could not trust her after all. Perhaps after Daršanga, I did not trust anyone in that manner.

Melisande removed my blindfold and her sapphire eyes filled my vision. I could see the wheels of her clever mind turning, that part of her birthright given to discern the fault lines in another person's soul. She blinked and I knew then that she had discovered mine. Her lips drew tight but her eyes softened. "You give me an impossible choice," she paused ruefully. "If I continue, then I prove myself cruel beyond measure, as depraved in my desires as the Mahrkagir of Drujan." The flechette now hovered but a hair's breadth above Naamah's pearl; I whimpered. "But if I do not, I will have yielded to you, something which I have never done for anyone."

I had nothing to say, for she had reckoned my gambit better than I myself did. Her beautiful eyes burned at me, twin flames, their brightness making me yearn for the cover of the blindfold. I braced myself for the sharp bite of pain I was sure to follow. Instead all I heard was the clatter of the flechette as it met the stone floor. Melisande closed her eyes, her melodious voice untuned with pain, and said, "I am not the monster you would make of me, Phèdre nó Delaunay."

Ah Elua, such a woman was Melisande Shahrizai. Just when I thought I could chart the course of her soul, so would she tack to some unexpected direction.

Her mercy left me bewildered. I tried to speak, but my words came out in an incoherent moan. Melisande elegantly bent her head to my lips. "What is it, Phèdre?" I think she thought I meant at last to give my _signale_. And truly, at that moment, I did. But the sound that emerged from my lips was not Hyacinthe's name, but the blazing unknowable syllables of the Name of God.

All at once, my body was seized by a more powerful climax than I had ever experienced. Though I spoke the Sacred Name no louder than a whisper, it echoed forth in an awe-inspiring cacophony. It was if a great hand had plucked the very heartstrings of the universe. My mind and consciousness expanded till my body hummed in tune with the vibrations of those tiniest particles of light and energy that were in everything as well as the music of the heavenly spheres in their grand courses.

This was how the One God had breathed life into creation. Not with gentle grace or cunning thought, but in a spasm of violent ecstasy.

When my body ceased its trembling and my senses returned, I noticed that my silken bonds had been reduced to the barest rags. Melisande's beautiful face appeared before me, eyes stricken with pain and not a little fear. "Phèdre, what have you done?" she asked with genuine astonishment. Her robe had slipped from her shoulders, her long shining hair from its braid. She stood before me utterly naked and strangely vulnerable. Ah, and truthfully I did not know what I had done or why I had done it. For if the Name of God could bind an angel, what could it do to one such as Melisande?

She cupped my face in her hands and kissed me more ardently and more deeply than she ever had before. We tumbled into her large and sumptuous bed as surely as fish taking to the water. The Name of God had stripped her of all artifice and left only raw passion in its wake. If she had once been controlled and composed even at the height of our bedroom games, she now held nothing back from me as I teased her with lips and tongue in all the ways I had been taught how. That part of me that owes naught to Kushiel and is the legacy of my long-forgotten mother and the hot blood of Jasmine House thrilled to hear her moan with pleasure as I dipped my head between her milky thighs to begin the _languissement_.

Just as she was on the verge of finding her release, she dragged me upward by the hair so that we lay face to face and breast to breast. Silently, Melisande took my small hand in hers and guided it to her sex and I reached inward, curling my fingers forward to find that hidden seat of a woman's pleasure. I gasped aloud as she did the same to me, and we moved together as one in that position named in the _Trois Milles Joies_ as "Narcissus Bending O'er the Water." No patron had ever asked it of me before, as it is one of mutual satisfaction and not of submission. I was in her and she in me, we moved in concert, and truly I could not tell where I left off and she began. We were the bright mirror and the dark, reflecting each other, infinite and eternal. As her inner walls began to tremble, Melisande drew me tight to her breast and cried out, "Phèdre, my angel, my soul!" And it was the wonderment in these words as much as the skill in her fingers that caused me to climax a second time.

After the shockwaves of pleasure had subsided, a sad cast came over my lady's impossibly beautiful features. She turned away from me, as if in shame, for having revealed her own unvarnished desires. Ah, Elua, it struck me to the core and almost made me laugh. I rested a hand on her drooping shoulder, "Melisande, will you never learn? That which yields is not always weak." And then I reached for her and kissed her, and she graciously surrendered to me, the general order reversed, yet not out of balance.

We rested in each other's embrace. In that moment between waking and sleeping, I swore I heard her say in a broken whisper, "I love you, Phèdre." But that may only have been my own dreaming.

* * *

I have kept the memory of that night close and reflected on it in the solitude of my heart. Had I dealt her a blow or given her a gift? In the ongoing contest of wills between Melisande and I (for yes, there would always be games), I could never tell who had won and who had lost that particular round.


End file.
